5 ms·

Playback Video Player

43 points by bpierre 12y ago

lawry 12y ago
Even though it sounds fancy and it probably will work fine, something inside me tells me a video player should be native. Or can Chromium really playback video files better than vlc/MPlayerX/QuickTime?
- espadrine 12y ago
  What does "native" mean? Chromium has its own video playback code, which this is using: https://github.com/mafintosh/playback/blob/master/index.html#L12 https://github.com/mafintosh/playback/blob/master/index.html... Chromium relies on ffmpeg, which is a fairly efficient library. It even relies on VLC's world-class h264 implementation, http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html.
  - revelation 12y ago
    I don't get it, so this is a video player app that's built on a browser which then just uses the same thing my actual video player does? I think we can skip a layer here.
    - espadrine 12y ago
      Your actual video player app is built on a UI library that just uses the same thing this video player app does. Sure, you could skip a layer and make your video player talk directly to X11, but it wouldn't be cross-platform. The browser is both an HTTP client and a UI kit, and some people are starting to skip the HTTP client part, and use it as a UI framework, essentially a competitor to Qt or GTK. That includes editors such as Brackets, Light Table or Atom, video viewers such as the infamous Popcorn Time, and games such as Game Dev Tycoon. Picking a UI library is always about finding the right balance between cross-platform, ease of development and memory usage. Kits such as node-webkit and the Atom Shell (used here) give access to one more choice, albeit one which may consume more memory (for now) than many other options.
iLoch 12y ago
This + peerflix would be great. Like popcorn time but I can enter my own torrent URLs.
- mafintosh 12y ago
  playback supports live streaming of magnet links / torrent files atm using https://github.com/mafintosh/torrent-stream https://github.com/mafintosh/torrent-stream.
- chkuendig 12y ago
  FYI: you can just copy-paste torrent and magnet links into popcorn time to play them.
  - riffraff 12y ago
    or drag&drop them
  - fudged71 12y ago
    TIL! Thank you!
  - iLoch 12y ago
    Wow thanks!
hanlec 12y ago
The live streaming of the BT sounds like a very interesting feature. One that could lead to possible improvements to those sites hosting videos behind thousands of ads.
porsager 12y ago
Were there specific reasons in choosing atom-shell rather than eg. nw.js?
- mafintosh 12y ago
  atom-shell has good tooling support (i.e. https://github.com/mafintosh/atom-shell https://github.com/mafintosh/atom-shell, https://github.com/maxogden/atom-shell-packager https://github.com/maxogden/atom-shell-packager) which makes shipping apps a lot easier atm
  - 13years 12y ago
    "which makes shipping apps a lot easier atm" Yet, the windows and linux builds are not available?
wodenokoto 12y ago
Other than playing with fun technologies (which I'm all for) what does this bring us? It doesn't seem to play many formats (one of the major strengths of VLC is that it plays almost anything) nothing I saw about it that seems to scream innovative UI or super efficient playblack on low-end devices.
- freeall 12y ago
  We wanted to see how easy it was to build "native" apps with html/css/javascript today using atom-shell. And it turns out that it's actually quite easy. A feature we missed from VLC was that you could send video to Chromecast. That feature is now in Playback.
deevus 12y ago
How does the Playback Chrome Extension work? I can't see it anywhere on YouTube videos... halp?
ddoolin 12y ago
Mathias has done some really interesting things with the BitTorrent protocol and Node.js and friends. I just saw his talk from JSConfEU last year and found it pretty fascinating (http://2014.jsconf.eu/speakers/mathias-buus-madsen-javascript-torrents-and-mad-science.html http://2014.jsconf.eu/speakers/mathias-buus-madsen-javascrip...). The applicability for this type of technology does seem a lot greater than what it's traditionally been used for.

43 points by bpierre 12y ago

lawry 12y ago

Even though it sounds fancy and it probably will work fine, something inside me tells me a video player should be native. Or can Chromium really playback video files better than vlc/MPlayerX/QuickTime?

espadrine 12y ago
What does "native" mean? Chromium has its own video playback code, which this is using: https://github.com/mafintosh/playback/blob/master/index.html#L12 https://github.com/mafintosh/playback/blob/master/index.html... Chromium relies on ffmpeg, which is a fairly efficient library. It even relies on VLC's world-class h264 implementation, http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html.
- revelation 12y ago
  I don't get it, so this is a video player app that's built on a browser which then just uses the same thing my actual video player does? I think we can skip a layer here.
  - espadrine 12y ago
    Your actual video player app is built on a UI library that just uses the same thing this video player app does. Sure, you could skip a layer and make your video player talk directly to X11, but it wouldn't be cross-platform. The browser is both an HTTP client and a UI kit, and some people are starting to skip the HTTP client part, and use it as a UI framework, essentially a competitor to Qt or GTK. That includes editors such as Brackets, Light Table or Atom, video viewers such as the infamous Popcorn Time, and games such as Game Dev Tycoon. Picking a UI library is always about finding the right balance between cross-platform, ease of development and memory usage. Kits such as node-webkit and the Atom Shell (used here) give access to one more choice, albeit one which may consume more memory (for now) than many other options.

iLoch 12y ago

This + peerflix would be great. Like popcorn time but I can enter my own torrent URLs.

mafintosh 12y ago
playback supports live streaming of magnet links / torrent files atm using https://github.com/mafintosh/torrent-stream https://github.com/mafintosh/torrent-stream.
chkuendig 12y ago
FYI: you can just copy-paste torrent and magnet links into popcorn time to play them.
- riffraff 12y ago
  or drag&drop them
- fudged71 12y ago
  TIL! Thank you!
- iLoch 12y ago
  Wow thanks!

hanlec 12y ago

The live streaming of the BT sounds like a very interesting feature. One that could lead to possible improvements to those sites hosting videos behind thousands of ads.

porsager 12y ago

Were there specific reasons in choosing atom-shell rather than eg. nw.js?

mafintosh 12y ago
atom-shell has good tooling support (i.e. https://github.com/mafintosh/atom-shell https://github.com/mafintosh/atom-shell, https://github.com/maxogden/atom-shell-packager https://github.com/maxogden/atom-shell-packager) which makes shipping apps a lot easier atm
- 13years 12y ago
  "which makes shipping apps a lot easier atm" Yet, the windows and linux builds are not available?

wodenokoto 12y ago

Other than playing with fun technologies (which I'm all for) what does this bring us? It doesn't seem to play many formats (one of the major strengths of VLC is that it plays almost anything) nothing I saw about it that seems to scream innovative UI or super efficient playblack on low-end devices.

freeall 12y ago
We wanted to see how easy it was to build "native" apps with html/css/javascript today using atom-shell. And it turns out that it's actually quite easy. A feature we missed from VLC was that you could send video to Chromecast. That feature is now in Playback.

deevus 12y ago

How does the Playback Chrome Extension work? I can't see it anywhere on YouTube videos... halp?

ddoolin 12y ago

Mathias has done some really interesting things with the BitTorrent protocol and Node.js and friends. I just saw his talk from JSConfEU last year and found it pretty fascinating (http://2014.jsconf.eu/speakers/mathias-buus-madsen-javascript-torrents-and-mad-science.html http://2014.jsconf.eu/speakers/mathias-buus-madsen-javascrip...). The applicability for this type of technology does seem a lot greater than what it's traditionally been used for.